2001.09.08 16:50
back to the Campo Marzio
As to Tafuri, I have documented so many cases within the Ichnographia that carried explicit meaning and message on Piranesi's part, that all of Tafuri's theorizing that the Ichnographia is indicative of and/or percursor to the modern meaninglessness of architectural form is plainly and emphatically wrong. What Tafuri obviouly never did, but definitely should have done, is to translate all the Latin labels that Piranesi applies to virtually all the plans of the Ichnographia. It is only through reading the labels and the planimetrics in combination that the full meaning of Piranesi's Campo Marzio comes through.
2003.01.19 17:26
abstract for Studium Urbis
Mnemonically Delineating Veracity
"Authenticity is one thing, veracity another."
Marguerite Yourcenar, "Faces of History in the Historia Augusta" in The Dark Brain of Piranesi and Other Essays.
An apparent lack of veracity has always been at issue within modern interpretations G. B. Piranesi's Ichnographia Campi Martii (1757-62) despite Piranesi's extraordinary 'scientific' knowledge of ancient Rome and it's remains as evident throughout the four volumes of Le Antichità Romane (1756), as well as throughout Piranesi's other archaeological publications, including the Il Campo Marzio dell'Antica Roma. Contemporary architectural theorists from historian Manfredo Tafuri to architect Peter Eisenman view the Ichnographia as a city devoid of its own history, thus a plan prognosticating autonomous urbanism, yet that is exactly what the Ichnographia Campi Martii is not.
Beginning with comparisons between select portions of the Piranesi's Ichnographia and Giambattista Nolli's Pianta Grande di Roma, it becomes clear that the Ichnographia is an elaborate mnemonic devise. Like the imaginary building plans that Roman orators created in their minds as an aid toward the memorization of their speeches, the Ichnographia is literally an imaginary plan manifest as an aid toward the memorization of virtually all of ancient Rome's history. Thus the Ichnographia is not a fantastical reconstruction, rather, like the art of memory itself, the Ichnographia is a reenactment.
Mnemonically Delineating Veracity concludes with a brief reenactment of how an independent artist from Philadelphia came to discover a heretofore unnoticed initial(?) printing of the Ichnographia Campus Martius.
2003.05.25
sentences
3288
Aside from a straight forward account of the actual finding and its documentation, the contents will also contain the more "revealing" aspects of my Campo Marzio interpretation, specifically the Pagan-Christian double theater, as well as my criticism of the "unfounded" interpretations of Tafuri, Bloomer, Allen, and Eisenman.
2003.05.25
sentences
3288
The secondary theme to come out of Tafuri's descriptions of the Campo Marzio is the notion of unknowability, insignificance, and the archeological mask." It is these ideas that I will refute and subsequently correct.
I can speculate that Tafuri believed the "archeological mask" covered a historical-polemical agenda on Piranesi's part, and, if so, Tafuri disclosed his own prejudices.
I suspect that Tafuri's own historicist-polemical agenda got in the way of an objective analysis-disclosure of Piranesi's true intentions as portrayed by the Campo Marzio.
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2003.08.30
Re: FW Evolutionary theory and architecture
In response to Alex's posting:
1. I discovered the other printing of Piranesi's Ichnographia Campi Martii, something undetected by architectural theorists and historians for close to two and a half centuries. 2. I wonder how many brain cells it took to figure out the latest legend of St. Helena. 3. Alex, I too can list my credentials (and put down others) as a form of evading questions.
How much does architectural history have to henceforth change/evolve because there are now known to be two Ichnographia Campi Martii? Certainly, Wilton-Eli's and Ficacci' "Complete" Piranesi publications are actually not complete. Likewise, what Tafuri, Allen, Bloomer, Aitkens, and Eisenman wrote about Piranesi's Campo Marzio was done without knowledge of two Ichnographias--what good are theories if they are not based on correct history, ie, reality?
Alex, you started this thread with the statement, "In my continuing research into the history of architecture I am continually surprised by the lack of an adequate theory of change to explain the shift from style to style." It was my ongoing research of Piranesi's Ichnographia Campi Martii that unexpectedly led me to, and via Helena I found that architectural history so far lacked recognition of her predominant role in the empire-wide spread of Christian (church) architecture. Helena's 'building' activities coincided with Constantine's legalization of Christianity, and after Helena's death (c. 28 July 326), Constantine began a selective, but ongoing, outlawing/destruction of Pagan cults/temples--here architectural 'style' changed because of a very intentional metabolic, ie, simultaneous creative/destructive, process.
Aside from strictly religious (temple and church) architecture, the case can be made that classical Roman architecture, in general, reached its climax during the reign of Maxentius, and ended 28 October 312, when Maxentius lost his life in battle with Constantine at the Milvian Bridge--Maxentius became (usurpative) emperor of Italy and North Africa 28 October 306, and Constantine attributes his Christian conversion to events that occurred the eve of 28 October 312. The architecture built in Rome under Maxentius is of the utmost refinement, eg, the Circus of Maxentius manifests the most precisely designed of all Roman circuses. [Incidentally, the Circus of Maxentius plays a key role in the manifestation of two Ichnographia Campi Martii.] Records indicate that it may have been only a month after Constantine's triumph at the Milvian Bridge that the first Christian Basilica in Rome, first named after Constantine and today St. John Lateran, began construction. The architecture of Rome executed under Constantine (312-330) further includes (at least), St. Peter's at the Vatican, separate Basilicas of St. Lawrence, Agnes, and Peter et Marcellius, Santa Croce in Gerusalemme (which is all that remains today of Elegabalus' Sessorian Palace, where Helena took up subsequent residence in Rome), the Arch of Constantine (which reused pieces of the Arch of Trajan), the Baths of Constantine, the Baths of Helena, and the Mausoleum of Helena (whose ruins exhibit construction very similar to the ruins of the great Constantinian Bath of Treves (Trier, 306-312), which were the largest Roman Baths outside Rome).
It is important to remember that during Constantine's 31 years as first partial and then sole ruler of the Roman Empire, the amount of time he actually stayed in the city of Rome amounts to only several months. [I'll have to check, but it appears that, when Emperor, Constantine spent the most time at Constantinople, and the second most time at Treves.] Nonetheless, the architecture of Rome (the city) began to change dramatically under his rule, and this is due to Helena's sustained presence in Rome. Moreover, Constantine can be credited with beginning the Byzantine 'style' when he ultimately moved the capital of the Roman Empire to a whole new and Christian city, Constantinople (founded 324 and dedicated 330).
By the end of the 4th century, Paganism was completely outlawed under Theodosius, and thus Pagan temples were no longer to be built.
The 'paradigm shift' from Pagan architecture to Christian architecture does not need a "theory of change" for it to be "coherently" explained. What it requires is a full knowledge of the history of the time when the change occurred.
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2004.06.16 05:53
cloning architecture - a global search
On the Campo Marzio issue, I've (already) compiled a bibliography of architectural literature on Piranesi's large plan. Briefly, before Tafuri there is Fasolo in 1956 (who Tafuri in places reiterates, but he did not note any of the 1956 mistakes), and Scully on Kahn in 1962. Tafuri's Architecture and Utopia was first published in Italian in 1973, and his The Sphere and the Labyrinth was first published in Italian in 1980. Since 1980, most architectural writers have sprouted off the Tafuri branch, and there is only one architectural writer who, in 1981, began to sprout off Kahn's branch of investigation entwined with reenactment.
2005.04.30 11:55
Koolhaas versus the Actor
There is a constant cry for attention, attention to the fact that links in cyberspace architecturally communicate as much as doors and windows and promenades communicate in real space. Come into my architecture, visit my architecture, inhabit my architecture, leave my architecture. No admission charge, however.
Simple html is Quondam's only real structure, and the linearity at Quondam is subject to the linearity of passing time. "Loose and rigid at the same time" is what makes Quondam sustainable from this architect's two hands point of view. Otherwise, all museums are all about content, aren't they?
I don't give a shit what architects think about Tafuri, what I do care about is what architects know about Piranesi's Ichnographia Campi Martii. If architects and their educators choose to ignore long term rigourous research regarding the Ichnographia Campi Martii that literally far surpasses what are otherwise only Tafuri's speculations, then what does that say about architect's being sensitive and attune to existing conditions, programmatic demands, evironmental factors, etc., etc.?
Is Quondam subliminally a museum about getting under architect's skin?
2005.05.05 09:37
Koolhaas versus the Actor
I do have a digital version of the Ichnographia in its second printed state, but it's in separate scanned pieces, and even each piece is a large file, so I won't be uploading anything to the image gallery just yet. What I can do is restore the Encyclopedia Ichnographica back to what it was at quondam 20 March 2000. Plus, "Inside the Density of Piranesi's Ichnographia Campi Martii" (the paper written for the INSIDE DENSITY colloquium Brussels, Belgium 1999) will very soon be uploaded at museumpeace--there are lots of diagrams there.
Can you at least explain how "architecture bereft of the signified, split from any symbolic system... has a very parallel, almost identical meaning to 'the birth of the architecture of reenactment'?" I see lots of architecture of reenactment that's very much signifying and very much comingled with a symbolic system. Again, the Ichnographia Campi Martii is all signifiers and symbolic system which Tafuri missed entirely. Tafuri's take on the Campo Marzio is what's really bereft here, isn't it?
2005.05.05 11:08
Koolhaas versus the Actor
I just did a very quick scan of "l'architecture dans le boudoir," and it seems a very good reference point, and a very good point of departure for further investigation regarding architecture and reenactment. Taking "l'architecture dans le boudoir" and the non-Tafuri reading of the Campo Marzio plan may indeed deliver heretofore unexpected fruitful results in terms of understanding all the mid-late 20th architecture that Tafuri writes about.
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2005.05.05 18:37
Koolhaas versus the Actor
I've just read half of "l'architecture dans le boudoir" and yes it is exactly what I should be reading again right now. I haven't come across any reference to Piranesi yet (and I didn't find any in my initial quick scan of the text either). Let's put aside the notion of my interpretation of the Campo Marzio plan disqualifying Tafuri's whole argument, and focus rather on the question whether a good understanding of "reenactionary architecturism" is indeed missing from Tafuri's argument, and then whether a good understanding of "reenactionary architecturism" brings Tafuri's argument into much better focus. So far, I can at least note that Tafuri was unaware of Rossi's Modena Cemetery design reenacting Piranesi's design of the Bustum Hadriani within the Campo Marzio--
2005.05.05 23:19
Koolhaas versus the Actor
I just realized that there are (at least) two English "l'architecture dans le boudoir" texts by Tafuri. The 'first' was published in Oppositions 3 (May 1974), the 'second' is chapter 8 of The Sphere and the Labyrinth (1980). The text I starting reading today is the one from Oppositions, and I've now compared the two texts and they are not at all identical. For example, Piranesi is not referenced at all in the first text. Overall, much has been added to the second text to 'fill it out' and update it, but there are also some changes (although some of the changes may be due to different translators).
Yes, the concept of reenactment is there within "l'architecture dans le boudoir," but nowhere does Tafuri explain or even recognize it as such. Tafuri mentions that a "code" has been lost, and thus the language architects use is devoid of meaning, implying that if the code were still known, then the meaning would be known as well. For me, reenactionary architecturism is the code and the provider of meaning.
In English, the first chapter of The Sphere and the Labyrinth is "The Wicked Architect," and this chapter too was published earlier and separately, (or maybe I'm thinking of the first chapter of Architecture and Utopia).
Anyway, it looks to me like The Sphere and the Labyrinth is itself a bricolage, composed of disparate pieces that were ultimately brought together, which perhaps explains the very first paragraph (which I responded to with "How Ironic!"
2005.05.06 16:06
Koolhaas versus the Actor
Manfredo Tafuri, "G.B. Piranesi: L'Archtettura come Utopia Negativa" in Angelus Novus, no. 20, January 1971, republished as "Giovanni Battista Piranesi: L'utopie negative dans l'architecture" in L'Architecture d'aujourd'hui no. 184, March/April 1976, republished as "The Wicked Architect": G.B. Piranesi, Heterotopia, and the Voyage in The Sphere and the Labyrinth, 1980.
I did not mean to imply that "The Wicked Architect" may have first appeared within Architecture and Utopia.
'l'architecture dans le boudoir' is the penultimate chapter in the 1987 English edition. The last chapter is entitled "The Ashes of Jefferson".
2005.05.06 16:24
Koolhaas versus the Actor
aml, you write:
tafuri starts with the analysis of james stirling's leicester laboratory. initially it might be argued that this building is using a symbolic system [ships, machine aesthetic, other buildings], but tafuri argues the way this reenactment is being done [and one of the key points is reenacting other buildings, this second stage removement] splits it, removes it from the symbolic system... no longer a direct reference, architecture with stirling is referencing itself
can you provide some examples where architecture is a direct reference and thus not a reference to itself? what is a direct reference in general?
also, you write:
another way of looking at this is in general looking at the five architects. here again, we have an architecture of self-reference, the five architects referencing le corbusier's forms without a direct connection with the origin of the forms.
can you provide an example where le corbusier's forms are referenced with a direct connection with the origin of the forms?
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2005.05.06 17:24
Koolhaas versus the Actor
OK, I see what you mean, but....
There are many historical examples were architecture references itself, e.g., renaissance architecture referencing classical architecture, or even the second pyramid at Giza referencing the Great Pyramid at Giza.
Le Corbusier is just as much a reenactor as Stirling and the NY5 are reenactors. Le Corbusier reenacted machine forms and ship forms and American agricultural architecture forms. And Le Corbusier even ultimately reenacted himself--the Palais des Congres (1964) reenacts the Villa Savoye (1929)
I don't buy the notion of there ever really being a split from the symbolic system. Degrees of separation, yes, but no real split.
Stirling is a consumate reenactionary architect, and he knew it, but he put most of his clues in his architecture only--although his entry for Roma Interrotta is an overt reference to Piranesi's Campo Marzio plan and reenactionary architecturism. Just as Rossi reenacted the Bustum Hadriani with the Modena Cemetery, but it doesn't look like he ever told Tafuri about it. Yes, Rossi was silent, as are most architects when it comes to telling others where their real 'originality' comes from.
2005.05.08 10:06
Re: Tafuri
Does this so-called "divorce of signs from their signified" create some kind of inferior, less authentic, outcome? Or is it really just a matter of degrees of separation?
2005.05.08 12:59
Koolhaas versus the Actor
...in reference to the Tafuri "mistakes" now at museumpeace you say, "you should probably write that and publish it." You seem to have missed the obvious in that I already did write "it" and "it" is already published, in fact, republished now at www.museumpeace.com.
The same holds for "Inside the Density of G.B. Piranesi's Ichnographia Campi Martii" which is now republished at www.museumpeace.com.
The notion that texts within the Internet are somehow not published is bogus. Furthermore, the notion of texts published within the Internet being automatically much less reliable than texts published via books is also bogus, since texts published via books (and reputable publishers like MIT PRESS) are not automatically more reliable, and Tafuri's repeated publications of erroneous material regarding Piranesi's Campo Marzio plan is a prime example.
2005.05.08 19:03
Re: clarification
First off, I accidentally skipped a paragraph within the passages I sent you earlier today. The missing paragraphs comes after "...Campo Marzio leads to the same conclusion." Here's the paragraph:
The obsessive articulation and deformation of the composition no longer correspond to an ars combinatoria. The clash of the geometric "monads" is no longer regulated by any "preestablished harmony"; and, most important, it demonstrates that the only meaning this paradoxical casuistry can refer back to is pure geometry, in the absolute semantic void that characterizes it.
It seems that Tafuri saw (in the Campo Marzio) individual plans that don't signify anything either historic or symbolic or even realistically typologic, and all together the Ichnographia is heap of meaningless fragments, thus it's all a divorce from any symbolic/meaningful system.
I just read some of Barthes' Elements of Semiology where a sign is composed of a signifier and a signified, and, what Tafuri sees is the Campo Marzio plans (individually and as a 'whole') as signs that still have a signifier, i.e., architectural building plans, but these signs/plans lack a signified, something that gives the plans any real meaning.
In reality, Piranesi employed all kinds of signs that carry a wide variety of signifiers--sometimes it's the shape of the plan(s), sometimes it's the placement/location (rightly or wrongly) of the plan(s), often it's just the label/name attached to the plan (which signify at least some historical existence), and then there are examples of combinations of the above distinctions, e.g., the Atrium Minerva (wisdom) as centerpiece of the 'garden of satire' which is situated at a location coincident with the top of the Spanish Steps, where Piranesi moved his family and business about a years after the Campo Marzio was published.
Anyway, there is so much out there now (especially from Eisenman) regarding this great analysis that Tafuri did, that this may be just the beginning of a great unraveling. Odd, I never imagined that reenactment would be at the center of all this.
In simple terms, Tafuri's work is unfortunately a history that was cooked too quickly, served too quickly, and eaten up too quickly.
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